


The Madness of Punch

by tatooedlaura



Series: Life, Part 2 [31]
Category: The X-Files
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-29
Updated: 2017-11-29
Packaged: 2019-02-08 09:51:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12862023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatooedlaura/pseuds/tatooedlaura
Summary: Enlightening diatribes fueled by the Punch ...





	The Madness of Punch

MRI taken, fish fed, email answered, thumbs twiddled, Mulder phoned, brain picked by aforementioned phone call, groceries shopped for and mother retrieved, they headed to the appointment.

An hour later, they settled in the car, quiet for a moment before Maggie spoke … 

amusement lacing every word that followed, “so, basically, you have polyps in your sinuses and vigorous sex will break the blood vessels in your nasal cavity?”

This was possibly worse than when she innocently asked her mother, after hearing Bill talking to one of his friends, what 69’ing was, “I should have left you in the car.”

“Oh, no, dear. Then I would have nothing to share at the card party Thursday.”

“Don’t make me make you walk home.”

Maggie moved her hand to Scully’s arm, squeezing it tightly, “honey, believe me when I say I am overjoyed to hear that the worse things you have are fatty growths and too much sex.” Moving on, she clicked her seatbelt, “now, do you think we have time for milkshakes before you need to leave for the airport?”

Key in ignition, dignity thrown out the window, Scully grinned the grin of someone with fatty growths and too much sex, “plenty of time.”

&&&&&&&&&&

Mulder collapsed into guffawing giggles that left him gasping for air, “oh … good … God … shit, I can’t breathe … I would have given almost anything to have seen that.”

She shoved his feet over to make room so she could sit on the already creaking bed, “it was an experience but who really cares as long as that’s what it is. I’ll get the polyps taken care of when we get back and we’ll just have to have less vessel-breaking sex in the future.”

This sent him right back into laughter the likes of which finally had her putting her hand over his mouth, trying to get him to shut up given it was after 11pm local time and they were going to get thrown out of the dump that was ‘MeadowLodge Suits: Drive up, sleep in, get out’ if they didn’t quiet down. Yawning while she waited for him to calm, “by the way, I like that you didn’t even attempt to get two rooms, then lie about sharing.”

“Skinner isn’t an idiot. He’ll keep it quiet though and Dennis down in billing has been asking about us for years so he’ll shut up as well. Why waste money when we don’t have to?”

“Then why didn’t we stay at a better hotel with all this money we’re going to save?”

Mulder looked around the aesthetically unappealing mustard yellow décor, “what? You don’t like this?”

Moving to pull on pajamas, “just once, you’re going to let me book the hotel.” Once dressed, Mulder watching intently the whole 30 second process, she returned to the bed, “give me the five minute rundown, please.”

&&&&&&&&&

Case done by the following Monday afternoon, Skinner shipped them to Wyoming, mosquitoes the size of Scully eating her alive while they tramped the outskirts of Yellowstone, looking for a bank robber attempting to hide in the woods. At least this time, Mulder didn’t mention a nice trip to the forest.

As an aside, they traveled over the Old Faithful and shared a pizza in view of the geyser, Mulder, for what it was worth, snapping a picture of the top of the spout so he could show people how tall it was. Scully looked at him until he cracked, “what? I want to see just how many people give me that look before they either laugh me into oblivion or gently correct me in what they hope is the nicest voice possible.”

“You’re special, Mulder, you know that?”

Ringing his arm around her neck, he smiled as he kissed her temple, “just ‘cause I’ve got you.”

&&&&&&&&&

And suddenly it was the end of July, Skinner finally letting them home after varying degrees of cases and assholes and scary type fellows. Walking into Mulder’s apartment, he dropped their bags to the ground and turned to her, “it’s Thursday, Scully.”

“It is Thursday.”

“You know what Thursday is.”

“The day after Wednesday, last I checked.”

He could give her the Look like nobody’s business and she loved it, “I need some Punch.”

Shaking her head, she moved towards the bathroom, “call Mom and see when the festivities are happening.”

And he did and it was good.

In less than an hour, after a quick shower together and some general fooling around, which they had chosen not to do while on cases, they pulled up to Maggie’s, Mulder rushing up the walk and inside, leaving Scully behind to lock the car and be amused.

She found him breathing deeply the scent of homemade cooking and motherly love, grinning like the proverbial idiot. Maggie was already walking slowly towards the pair, boots gone, braces on, crutches present. Mulder hugged her the moment he could, Scully following soon after, “how are the ankles?”

Looking at her daughter, “it feels strange and I’m nervous without the boots but the end is in sight and that’s something.”

All moving into the kitchen, the ladies greeted them as if returning from a three-month long expedition, Betty going as far as declaring how much they’ve grown since they last saw them. Scully hugged her, “Mulder needs punch.”

With a grin, “we already have two glasses ready and places for you at the table.”

Mulder studied the seating arrangement, “why are we not next to each other?”

Janet, piping in as she shuffled Roswell cards courtesy of Mulder’s kitschy souvenir binge on vacation, “because, from what I recall, the punch makes her floppy and we need someone who can handle their liquor to catch her.” Pointing the deck at him, “that, my friend, is not you.”

He really couldn’t argue.

&&&&&&&&&&

Scully was asleep on the table by 9:18pm, head resting comfortably on the wood surface, the game happening around her, Lillian tucking her hair out of the way whenever it drifted across the playing area.

Mulder, on the other hand, somehow managed to hold total punch annihilation at bay even though total inebriation still occurred, his plan of one gulp of water for every two sips of punch failing miserably. His tongue was blue as midnight, which he continually shared roughly every 5 minutes and Betty, beside him, had to keep gently nudging his cards closer to his chest so the entire table, at least, couldn’t see them. When that round had finished, she turned to him, “Fox, would you like some more pie?”

With an enthusiastic nod, he moved to get it himself but Maggie held his arm while Betty retrieved the dessert. Thanking everyone at the table for their part in pie presentation, he took his first bite, waving his fork in Maggie’s direction, “she makes the best pies.”

Maggie caught the fork before it went in her eye, returning it and the attached hand to the table, “Janet made this one.”

“Then Janet makes the best pies, too.” Another bite later, “Scully doesn’t like pie. I don’t understand. I mean, she keeps trying pies but she just doesn’t like them. I’ve tried her with apple pie and cherry pie and peach pie and pumpkin pie and chocolate pie and I mean, my God, the amount of pie I’ve wasted on that woman is astounding. Peanut butter pie and blueberry pie and every time, she just takes a bite and looks like she’s gonna die and then slides it over to me to finish.” Turning towards Maggie again with the fork, “what did you do to her as a child? Did you force feed her rhubard pie or mincemeat or something? How could you raise a kid who doesn’t like pie?” Maggie tried to answer, defend her dessert choices for the past 34 years but never got past taking in a breath before he plowed ahead, re-addressing the table, Scully’s prone head and the air in general, “I love pie. Any kind of pie. My sister Sam used to make pretend pie and she always knew I’d eat it ‘cause she called it pie. She’d serve it up in her tea set, make me sit in that damn little chair and scoop up forkfuls of fake pie. At least she’d serve fake ice tea with it so that was something. She would line up her stuffed animals and dolls and just go down the line, feeding everybody pretend pie and pretend cookies and fake cake … once she made a pretend pot roast for us but then took it away ‘cause she said she’d accidently burned it and it tasted funny.” Taking a deeper swig of his Punch, “she stopped having her tea parties about a year before she disappeared but even on that last day, that afternoon, before we had the fight about the TV and before she floated in the air, she made a real pie for me … she made it with Oreos she’d smashed up and pressed into a pie pan and put frosting on as filling. She cut it and served it and brought me a glass of ice tea and told me she’d make me real pies from now on because she was going to be a chef and learn how to make all the pies for real so she’d always have something I’d like to eat.”

The table, right down the line, Maggie, Janet, Lillian, Betty, Ellie and Ruth, all had to fight various stages of sighs and sympathy, all wanting to hug Mulder tightly, all wanting to make the life of their Fox better.

He didn’t notice any of it, fork feeding himself another mouthful, “I think she would have been a good cook. She loved reading cookbooks. She’d get up on a stool when our mother was gone and study the buttons and dials on the stove, look inside the oven, make me come explain to her how the gas to the burners worked. She is irritating as hell sometimes but for a little sister, she’s not too bad.”

No one corrected his present tense usage for his long-gone sibling but Ellie quietly scooted his cup away as he continued, “I think that when Scully and I have a kid, I’ll buy her a tea set and explain the stove to her, feed her all kinds of pretend pie and see if maybe she wants to be a chef.” Aiming for the third time at an astonished Maggie, “you’ll have to teach her how to make meatloaf and pie and lasagna but,” swinging the fork around to Betty, “you will not be teaching her how to make the Punch. You will make the Punch and I will drink the Punch but even when she gets to be 40 or 80 years old, she will never be old enough to see the Punch.”

Looking around at the women, he grinned a blue-tooth smile, “why are we not playing? Did I win?” Glancing from the fork in his hand to the near empty plate in front of him, “I like pie.”

Twenty minutes later and after another piece of pie, sans diatribe, Mulder gave into annihilation, entire body dropping slowly against Betty, his last words being, “I should get Scully home to bed.”

Betty, supporting his dead weight admirably, gestured for assistance and soon, FoxNDana were both snoring peacefully on the table. Maggie took them both in, her glance sliding between, then to her cohorts, “how should we get them somewhere to sleep for the night?”

Studying the situation, Ellie suggested they start with Mulder. It took all of them to get him up, move him, pull down the sheets on the adjacent bedroom, lay him down, set an hopefully unnecessary wastebasket by the side of the mattress, be amused by his arm searching for Scully.

Returning to the kitchen, they expected to move Scully next but instead, found her sitting up in her chair, tears evident on her cheeks, the saddest look on her face they’d ever seen. Maggie held still on her crutches, “Dana?”

Scully sniffed hard, swiping her cheeks but not answering until Maggie asked when she’d woken up, if everything was okay, to which she finally responded, “I woke up when you asked him if he wanted pie.”

The ladies had a concrete-enough, vague notion of Scully’s personal life, complete with abduction, infertility and gunshot scars to collectively and quietly gather bags and shoes, calling hushed goodbyes while Scully sat there, guilt-laden at having chased away her mother’s friends with her insanity. Once the front door shut and Maggie returned to her, Scully waited for the inevitable, ‘what’s wrong’ but instead received a gently hand to her back and a quiet, “did you know he wanted to have a daughter with you?”


End file.
